Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A troubled millennial from small-town Texas will do anything to get into her top-choice law school, including murder.
About: Carly J. Hallman has written two novels. This is the first time she’s been recognized for a screenplay. Wait List finished in the top 10 of the 2021 Black List.
Writer: Carly J. Hallman
Details: 105 pages
There’s a new craze sweeping the nation. Rage-watching. This is when you watch something you know is going to get under your skin just so you can awaken your anger. I suppose it makes sense as some sort of ‘break glass in case of emergency’ last ditch effort to feel something on the emotional spectrum.
Well, I’m seeing this trend creep into the screenwriting industry now, as more and more writers are participating in rage-writing. They’re so mad at what’s going on in the world that they’re going to leave no stone unturned as they tear that world to shreds.
I believe Christy Hall is the writer who ushered in this new sub-genre with her script, “Get Home Safe,” which probably should’ve been titled, “Every Man on Planet Earth is Bad.”
Contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to rage-write a good script. The best writing tends come out of a strong emotional state. What you’re feeling. What you’re going through. And the stronger you feel something, the more passionately it will be displayed on the page. Now there are pitfalls to this approach, which include losing yourself in the emotion to the detriment of the story. I’m curious to see if today’s writer, Carly Hallman, has avoided that.
23 year-old Kate lives in a nameless middle-America town where she spends most of her time in the gym, tracking every calorie she burns (and I mean EVERY calorie – if she burns 649 calories, she does not enter that workout session as 650).
Kate is majorly OCD. In addition to calories burned, she meticulously plans her food consumption to ensure she never has a day where she goes over her TDE. She’s shredded to the point where you’re not sure whether to compliment her or send her to the hospital.
Kate is annoyed when a gym-bro named Chad starts hitting on her. He uses every opportunity to chat and Kate wants no part of it. But one day, when her car dies, she agrees to a smoothie with him if he’ll give her a ride home. Chad is giddy even as this is Kate’s biggest nightmare.
While this budding “romance” is happening, we learn that Kate is trying to get into Columbia law school. Unfortunately, she’s waitlisted. So she spends a lot of time on a reddit board about Columbia law school acceptees, watching as student after student announces getting accepted.
This gives Kate an idea. Waitlisted potentials only get in if accepted students voluntarily pull out… or die. So Kate begins researching the accepted girls, drives to where they live, cons them into letting her into their home, then stabs them to death. It doesn’t take long for the media to run with the story, dubbing the mystery murderer the Columbia Killer.
Meanwhile, Kate gets into fights with her 19 year old male manager at Subway and her Fox News watching drug-addict father at home. Chad pushes for a more serious relationship, helping Kate through her numerous money troubles, having no idea that Kate despises him. It is only as the story pushes towards its climax that we realize what Kate’s master plan is. When the cops come knocking, she’s going to blame it all on poor Chad.
Wait List is a good reminder that if you have a drama idea, add a dead body and your script instantly becomes marketable. This easily could’ve been a drama about a depressed girl who’s trying to get into law school. I used to make this mistake myself. Thinking that that was enough to get a script noticed.
Then I realized, someone’s going to need to sell this movie to audiences down the line. What have I given them to market? Nothing. Once you add a dead body (or, in this case, multiple dead bodies), you’ve got a trailer, you’ve got a poster, you’ve got a freaking *movie*. Never forget that. It’s a valuable lesson it took me too long to learn.
That choice did make this script more entertaining, for sure. But that doesn’t mean it was an easy read. One of the hardest things to pull off is an angry main character who blames everyone else for their problems. The anger makes them unlikable. And the inability to blame themselves for their mistakes turbo-charges that unlikability.
Kate is mean to Chad, who’s a genuinely nice guy. Hallman tries to paint him as a member of the patriarchy who’s more interested in making Kate dependent on him so he can control her. But you never get the sense that that’s his motivation.
I’ve said this before but whoever your main character has the most scenes with, that relationship is going to have the biggest influence on how your hero is perceived. Kate spends 75% of this story with Chad. And because she’s so mean to Chad. Because she doesn’t like him. Because she thinks he’s evil despite him always being nice. Because she leads him on despite the fact that he’s falling for her… we really dislike Kate.
On top of that, she hates men in general. It’s hard for audiences to like anybody who lumps a bunch of people into a single group and labels them as bad. Here’s a mini-monologue from Kate after she spots two lovey-dovey teenagers making out that pretty much sums up her character: “Go inside. Get some sleep, read a fucking book. This might feel fun now, but he’s gonna find a way to trap you, and then all your dreams will disappear. Except they won’t. They’ll still be in there, rattling around, driving you insane. And you won’t have any way to realize them because you’ll be stuck paying his rent and cooking his dinner and raising his fucking kids.”
Yikes.
Now, you might think, after reading that, that I didn’t like Wait List. You’d be wrong. I did like it. Despite being so angry, Kate is meticulously crafted as a character. She’s very specific and interesting from a development perspective. Let me give you an example. I read a ton of scripts where women struggle with mental issues and the ‘go to’ to show that they’re struggling is to show them cut themselves.
I’ve probably read the ‘cutting themselves’ scene in over 500 screenplays. It’d be very easy for this to be 501. But, instead, Kate is obsessed with her eyebrows. She hates the way they look. She hates that she can never groom them properly. So when she gets upset, she storms into the bathroom and, one by one, plucks tiny eyebrow hairs out with her fingernails. I love specific actions like this. It tells me that the writer isn’t just copying their favorite movies. They’re coming up with their own stuff, preferably from real-life experience.
That’s where you guys should be drawing all your inspiration from, by the way. If there’s a choice between including something that happened in your own life and something that happened in your favorite film, pick the real life option. It’s going to feel more real.
In addition to how interesting the character was, the plotting was strong as well. Once I realized she wasn’t just going to kill one person and sneak into law school under their name (which is what I assumed from the logline), but rather keep killing girls in the hopes that she’d move up higher and higher on the wait list, I was sold.
Yes, it was a ridiculous plan. But that ridiculousness was believably offloaded to the character. We know that Kate has freaking lost it. The fact that she thinks this is the solution confirms that.
Not to mention, her killing spree gave the plot momentum (she always had a goal), conflict (the victim resisted, requiring her to overcome the obstacle) and suspense (the cops were closing in on her).
I was never all the way in on Wait List because Kate was so unlikable. But, as a whole, the script was engaging. And that’s all you need to get people to recommend your script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Is 105 pages the new industry standard for a spec script? If you remember, back in the day, the standard used to be 120 pages. That changed around 2010 when 110 became the new limit. Lately, I’ve been seeing a LOT of scripts (including this one) top off at 105. So is this the new standard? It’s always good to keep a spec script lean. So 105 pages is a good goal. But page count is more complicated than that. A 105 page script from a writer who likes to write thick paragraphs of text is going to read slower than a 120 page script from a writer who likes to write sparse 1-2 line paragraphs and lots of dialogue. I’d prioritize making your pages lean over hitting an arbitrary page count. With that said, 105-110 pages is a good wheelhouse to be in when it comes to spec screenplays.
